When you see that a band’s demo was strictly limited to only 13 physical copies, you just know it’s going to be amazing! Well, those copies are gone, and the demo was made available for free on-line. Knowing full well this was going to be another one of those “KVLT” black metal bands, I could not resist the urge to see how bad the demo really was.

Surprisingly, this is one of the better underground black metal demos I’ve heard in a long while. That doesn’t mean this is a great demo by any stretch of the truth, it just means that it doesn’t flat out suck. The quality on this is actually rather good, and only “Freezing” sounds like it was recorded with a crappy tape deck while the band performed it in their mother’s bedroom. The quality of “Hatred And Malice”, as well as “Ascension” and “Solitude … Pantheon Lost” happens to be pretty good, except for the fact that the levels are always different. The drumming on “Ascension” sounds far different from the drumming on “Hatred And Malice”, while the quality on “Freezing” is absolutely awful in comparison to everything else.

Some of the music on here is decent, though extremely repetative at times. “Hatred And Malice” is perhaps the only song you’d be willing to go back and listen to, only because of the high pitch guitar chords that stand out throughout the song. After a while, these chords do get irritating, but at least it’s something different compared to the rest of the demo’s rather bland take on atmospheric black metal. But the worst part about it is that “Freezing” introduces these whiny, crappy black and white horror film ghoulish wails that will make you pretty much wet yourself from laughing at them, especially since that’s pretty much the song, any real vocals are in the background of this awful wailing, and so low it’s hard to hear them, let alone attempt to decipher them. This wailing also appears in the last two tracks as well.

If you’re into this kind of black metal, go ahead and download the demo for free, it honestly isn’t the worst demo made available. If it weren’t for the crappy wails in “Freezing” and in the background of the last two tracks, and the varying recording quality of the demo, this would be a gem of a demo release for this type of black metal. Even if you’re a fan of “KVLT” black metal, you won’t really find much about this release to appreciate.